


A Helping Hand

by SirKai



Category: Original Work, schwarz - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-11
Updated: 2012-09-11
Packaged: 2017-11-14 01:28:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirKai/pseuds/SirKai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Plague physician Zacharias teaches his new colleague a painful and humiliating lesson in not touching things that don't belong to you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Helping Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Veitstanz](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Veitstanz).



> Characters and setting belong to Veitstanz! Huge thanks to her for letting me writing a fic of them, and I had a lot of fun with it!  
> http://veitstanz.tumblr.com/  
> http://veitstanz.tumblr.com/ocs

“Do not touch those,” Zacharias ordered.

Pfeifer nudged the polished tool with this thumb, and cocked his head curiously. “What are these supposed to be? Tweezers?” he asked.

“No, those are forceps.” The doctor said. He didn’t look up from his ironing board.

“So they’re like tweezers?”

“No,” Zacharias grumbled, now scrubbing more aggressively at the smudges and stains across his uniform. The jet blackness of his collared shirt blended with the long ulster coat he was cleaning. “They serve a completely different function.”

“But they look so similar.” Pfeifer plucked the instrument from the table top and dangled it at eye level. “How could they not be like-”

“Put them down!” Zacharias shot a look at Pfeifer from over his shoulder, narrowing his eyes into an accusing stare. “I haven’t had a chance to clean them since the last operation.”

Pfeifer froze. He caught his own unblinking expression in the distorted reflection from the forceps’ metallic sheen. The rat catcher was beginning to notice faint stains of various coloration across the surface of the tool. “Operation?” He parroted slowly, as if learning the word for the first time.

“Autopsy, actually,” Zacharias said with a sneer. He reached over to the stove and pushed the water-filled iron kettle until it nestled over the stove’s flickering flame.

Pfeifer released the forceps from his pinching fingertips, sending them clattering back atop the wooden table. He held his hands up in the air defensively. “Don’t you clean this shit after you use it!?”

“Yes.” The doctor swiped a dry white rag from the edge of the counter and marched towards the supply table. “Unfortunately, today’s autopsy was interrupted by a filthy hooligan, begging for change like a street side panhandler.”

“I didn’t beg for a thing, ya quack!” Pfeifer said as Zacharias placed a palm at the back of his neck and pushed him around the corner into the bathroom.

“Yes, of course, you were asking very nicely,” Zacharias smarmed, flicking the wide brimmed hat from Pfeifer's head and revealing even more frayed red hair. “No doubt intending to donate the money to something other than your decaying liver.” He flicked on the oil lamp and pushed Pfeifer over the pristine sink bowl. Light reflected off of almost every surface of the room.

Pfeifer shielded his eyes, squinting through his fingers. “Ah!”

The doctor slapped Pfeifer’s hands away from his face. “Are you an imbecile!? Don’t touch your eyes with contaminated hands! In fact, don’t put them anywhere near your face! Good gracious Pfeifer...”

“Goddamn you, it’s like being poked and prodded around a hospital.”

“That is the idea, now hold still,” Zacharias ordered. He gently opened the cupboard below the sink with the toe of his boot and retrieved a small bottle of yellow oil and a weighted wax paper sack. The glass of the bottle rung inside the tiny bathroom as they were placed on the edge of the sink. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

The doctor paced out of the bathroom. Pfeifer sighed, and whistled to himself until Zacharias returned to the bathroom sink, holding a steaming kettle with an oven mitt blanketing each hand. “What the hell is this, dinner ti- OW! That burns, you son of a bitch!” 

Steam crawled through the air from the sink and began fogging the mirror as Zacharias poured the scalding water over Pfeifer’s hands. “Quit being so weak,” he said. “And watch your language. Your word choice is offensive.”

“Just like the rest of me, right?” Pfeifer’s grimace diminished as the doctor lifted the pot from the sink and sat it at his feet.

“A surprisingly astute observation, coming from you.”

“Go to hell, bird freak.”

Zacharias pulled a white bar of soap from the wax paper bag and scrubbed it vigorously across Pfeifer’s hands. The doctor spent several minutes thoroughly cleaning the darkened grime between Pfeifer’s fingers and beneath his nails. His pained groans from the burning water slowly transitioned into impatient sighs.

“Your hands are disgusting,” Zacharias commented, lifting the kettle back up to the sink. "And you desperately need to shave."

“Yeah well your hands are... actually really smoo-”

Then the doctor dumped the remaining water over Pfeifer’s sudsy hands.

The rat catcher yelped, and heaved a flurry of curses at the physician until the stream of water from the pot reduced to slow drops.

Setting the kettle back to the floor, Zacharias snatched the dry rag from over his shoulder and clasped it over Pfeifer’s hands to soak up the water.  
Pfeifer exhaled a relieving sigh. “Anything else that’s scorching hot that you wanna douse me with?”

“Not that I have planned for today,” Zacharias said blankly. He punctuated the delicate drying with a few aggressive rubs over Pfeifer’s fingers.

“You’re pure evil, you know that?”

The doctor didn’t respond. He placed the warm, damp rag over his shoulder and unscrewed the cap on the rectangular bottle of yellow oil left near the sink. “Now, I need you to remain as still as possible.” Zacharias’ words were rushed as he plucked another bag of wax paper from the bathroom cupboard, but this time he withdrew a slender brush from it. He dipped the tip of the brush into the oil and raised it to Pfeifer’s face.

“What is that for, doing my makeup?”

“And for the love of God, please just shut up,” Zacharias pleaded. He gently dotted and brushed the oil around Pfeifer’s eyes. The scented liquid seeped into his eyebrows and darkened the skin beneath his eyes. Zacharias added a couple of additional coats of oil to his patient’s face, then leaned back and analyzed his work with a cocked eyebrow and a satisfying nod.

Pfeifer’s brow drooped impatiently. He glanced at himself in the mirror with half-lidded eyes, like there wasn’t an ounce of surprise in his body worth expressing. “Thanks Doc,” he said dryly. “And what the hell is that smell?” Pfeifer inhaled loudly through his nose, and his eyes gravitated towards the ceiling for a moment as he thought. “It smells... like something rotten.”

“The oil does not smell ‘rotten!’ Do you have any idea how much this cost to procure? It’s not manufactured within hundreds of miles!” The doctor thumbed the cork back into the bottle’s neck with whitened knuckles, and dropped it into the wax paper sack.

Pfeifer rolled his eyes as Zacharias shoved the sacked bottle back into the cupboard and out of sight. “Maybe it’s not made easily available for a reason,” Pfeifer argued.

Zacharias balled up his fists threw an aggressive pointer finger at the sink. His face was rigid. “Just rinse your face off, or I could apply more water from the stove pop if you’d prefer.”

The rat catcher winced his eyes and stuck his tongue out as Zacharias turned his back and returned to the living area. “Once you’re finished, you’re going to help me clean up the supplies, so hurry up.” The doctor didn’t even raise his head when speaking.

“What!? Why?” Pfeifer begged, following the doctor into the hall.

“Because it would take substantially longer to do it all myself, and there are other things I’d like to have done today.” Zacharias returned to the ironing board, and continued to scrub it down with the soapy washcloth.

“But you told me not to touch anything!”

The doctor didn’t even glance back at his guest as he spoke. “Then allow me to rephrase: ‘do not touch anything unless I tell you to.’ Is that clear enough for you?”

“Yeah, but why would I want to help you clean up all your circus equipment?”

“Because the reason you’re here in the first place is to siphon money from me to support your pathetic alcohol dependency. As much as I disapprove of it, assistance is necessary at times. And you’re not leaving with my money unless you earn it.”

Pfeifer’s glare narrowed from across the room, his mind carefully trying to decipher several of the alien words spouted at him.

“Now grab the gloves from the top drawer of the cabinet and begin wiping down the autopsy tools.”

“Sure, whatever,” Pfeifer scoffed. He wrenched the wooden metallic drawer open and plucked a pair of stiff, black leather gloves from inside. The rat catcher sighed loudly, but assured himself that walking home tonight with a bottle in-hand was worth a bit of cleaning.

“And Pfeifer,” Zacharias called out.

The rat catcher perked his head up and glanced over his shoulder.

“Do not put the instruments near your face, unless you want me to simply bypass the oil treatment next time and apply the boiled water directly.”


End file.
